


Work-Life Balance (and the Perils of Homemade Sex Magic)

by SidaSidaEee



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Chastity Device, Co-workers, F/F, Magical Tattoos, Needles, Orgasm Denial, Pining, Sex Magic, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:42:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29365686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidaSidaEee/pseuds/SidaSidaEee
Summary: A junior office worker mage gets bored of her single life and drudge work job and decides to spice things up with some home-brewed spells. Feel free to skip the first chapter if you're squeamish about needles; you won't miss too much plot.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Magic of the Transanatolian Monastery

Shadi looked over her scattered notes one more time, triple-checking every step. The spell was hundreds of years old, photocopied out of an ancient manuscript, and not easy to follow, so she wanted to make sure she got everything right. Taking one last deep breath, she picked up her needle and went to work. She gently dipped it into the flame of a beeswax candle, running its length along the tip until she could feel the heat creeping up to her fingers. Just before it felt hot enough to burn, she quickly pulled it away and dipped it into the mug beside, making the infusion of herbs and alcohol sizzle and sterilizing, as well as sanctifying, her tool. Then came ink, a quick dip into a shallow tray of brilliant green liquid, and then she brought the needle to her soft skin and hesitated, taking a deep breath.

She was sitting on a cushion on her living room floor, surrounded by candles and herbs and loose three-hole-punched photocopies. She looked down at herself to see the candlelight play across her naked body, her folded legs spread wide, her freshly shaved pubic mound, and she thought long and hard, one last time. Barring some exceptionally difficult, expensive, and embarrassing counterspelling, what she was about to do would be permanent. But this really was what she wanted. She would rid herself of distractions, let herself feel, build up need and confidence and maybe even desperation... She shook her head, letting go of some lascivious thoughts. Yes. The spell was worth it, and the pain wouldn't be an issue for her. She checked her notes again, pressed the needle against her skin in just the right spot, and closed her eyes.

It took only a gentle push to pierce under the surface of her labia, the tiny prick sending an unfamiliar tightness across her skin along with a mote of pure pain. It didn't hurt as much as she was afraid it might, especially considering the wave of excitement and even pleasure that came along with it. Shadi opened her eyes to check the depth, pushing it just a couple of millimeters in before slowly drawing it out, relishing the feeling of the foreign object sliding through her. The needle gleamed mischievously in the flickering light as though asking for another try, and Shadi obliged. Once again she cleansed it in the candle flame. Once again she sanctified it in the tincture. Once again she loaded it with ink. She moved on to the next spot, closed her eyes...

The spell was fairly simple in construction, belying its unusual power. The tattoo was nothing more than a pair of elegant curves framing the vulva, an inverted cross where they met above, and a handful of runes dotted along them. It was created by Katoli mystics as a symbol of humility, a vow made manifest, and sometimes, rarely, a fitting punishment for sin. The spell would prevent Shadi from masturbating, an act the Katoli thought was evil and she thought was simply disappointing, an inadequate replacement for sex which she didn't want to concern herself with anymore.

Really, though, it was the thought of losing control over her body and becoming reliant on others for pleasure that had enticed her into taking such drastic measures. Just thinking about it sent a strange shiver through her, and hey, she thought, maybe at 26 sheer sexual desperation might just be what she needed to finally get over her shyness and get in bed with someone. It was a sort of game, too, a way to add some thrill and tension to months of endless commutes and long hours casting test spells in windowless runerooms. If she couldn't get her hands on any actually interesting research professionally, she could at least be horny as hell while she got through the grunt work.

These were the thoughts that kept returning to Shadi in the dim, warm bedroom, flashing by in the moments between every ritual movement and slowly fading as she pushed them aside with the next practiced step. Candle, tincture, ink, poke. The pain bloomed across her vulva, stronger and stronger as she drew the line of green ink across her sensitive skin. At the same time, though, it became more bearable, more familiar. Though she gasped and jerked her hand away whenever she brushed against the aching lines, the sensation of the needle itself became almost comforting.

By the time she was adding finishing touches to the framing lines, trying to make their symmetry perfect, Shadi found herself more than a little aroused, every touch of the needle making wetness well up between her lips. She smiled and shivered, tempted to take a break to indulge herself one last time before she finished the spell. But no, that would defeat the purpose. Where was her discipline? Her dedication? If she was going to swear off masturbation, she was going to do it right, and besides, wasn't the teasing the point? The more worked up she was by the end, the better, she decided. With that in mind, she began to relish the needle even more, imagining with each prick just how many more she had left, how much longer before the point of no return.

Tattooing the cross on her mound felt like a hard-earned break. The pleasure of her gentle stimulation hadn't lessened a bit, but the pain had started to build again, a dull, throbbing burn between her legs. The room seemed to be heating up, and despite her lack of physical exertion Shadi was starting to work up a sweat. She'd briefly considered opening a window or turning on an air blower before starting but had decided the quiet would be worth the heat. Now she was beginning to regret that decision. She couldn't stop now. Shadi drew the arms of the cross from the bottom up, from the center to the sides, feeling the needle hit home in slightly less sensitive skin with every jab. She tried to compose herself, steeling her nerves for the final steps, but there was only so much she could do.

Candle, tincture, ink, poke. Droplets of sweat crawled down her face, down her neck, and Shadi found herself slowing down, wiping at herself with her free hand in a desperate attempt to stop the distracting tickling cascading across her body. One droplet ran straight over the gentle curve of her right breast and perched itself just on the tip of her nipple, every slight movement making it sway just a bit, making its presence felt, taunting her. When she tried to wipe it away she found herself squeezing her breast, pinching the nipple and running her fingers around it in gentle circles. She couldn't bring herself to pull her hand away, even as she tried to return her focus to the spell. Candle, tincture, ink, poke. The cross was almost done, and the pleasure of fondling herself was stronger than she'd ever felt it before. Surely it wouldn't be too bad to reach down and-

No, she told herself. She would finish the spell, and she could tease herself all she wanted, but she wouldn't let herself cum. A drop of sweat rolled down her stomach and between her legs, and the sting as its salty trail crossed the tattooed lines brought her mind back to the task at hand. Candle, tincture, ink- but when Shadi attempted to wipe the offending droplet away she only made things worse, smearing sweat across her raw skin and making her freeze and clench her fists in pain. Her mouth opened, but she didn't let herself make any noise. The neighbors might get entirely the wrong idea if they heard screams of pain from a witch's apartment at midnight. She took a few deep, deep breaths, letting the pain pass over her in echoing waves, and waited for it to fade enough that she could move on. Poke, candle, tincture, ink.

With a few more dots and a bit of touch-up the cross was finished to match the diagram, its long arm stretching about halfway across the stubbly remains of her bush. Shadi paused again, looking over the room. The beeswax candle had burned nearly all the way down to its little ceramic stand, the tincture boiled down far enough that she had to swish the needle in it at an angle to dip it far enough in. The tray of green ink was almost empty. Only a little more to go. The runes wouldn't take too long to add. Shadi reached out to the ink, wincing as her body's movement pressed and stretched her tattooed skin, and carefully slid the tray across the casting rug, swapping it with the smaller tray beside. This one held a deep, stormy blue, almost black in the warm candlelight. Candle, tincture, ink, poke. Only a little more. Only a little more.

The runes hurt more than anything else. Returning to her sensitive outer labia after the brief respite traveling up her mound for the cross was almost too much for Shadi. Her hands shook with every poke, and she found herself letting the needle linger against her skin to steady it. The delicate scrape of metal against her skin sent electric shivers down her legs and up her spine, and somehow that new sensation gave her the will to go on. Only a little more. All thoughts were gone from her mind except the steps of the ritual and the precise positioning of the runes in her notes. Candle, tincture, ink, poke. The little blue glyphs fit neatly between the waves of their guidelines, spelling out words Shadi had looked up and forgotten the meaning of. Between the heat, the pain, and the pleasure, her head was spinning. Candle, tincture, ink, poke. The cushion beneath her was sticky with her juices, and she felt for a moment as though she could almost bring herself to orgasm with just the needle, if only the runes had been a little closer in, her labia a little more sensitive...

And suddenly, after finishing one more little blue rune, she cleansed the needle and tilted the mug to get enough depth out of it to dip it fully and looked at the spellbook — and there was no next rune. She was done. The needle fell from her grasp of its own accord, clinking into the tincture mug, and Shadi let her shoulders slump, panting. There was only one thing left to do, something she had been waiting for far too long, had wished for even when all other thoughts had left her. The ointment was waiting within arms reach. Shadi shakily wiped her hands down with a damp towel and grabbed at the bowl, dipping her fingers in hungrily. It felt heavenly against her tortured skin, soothing the stinging pain even as she knew it was doing its work to seal in her unforgiving magic.

She started from the top, wiping away the burning cross etched into her senses with cool oil and numbing herbs. As she worked her way down, rubbing small circles with both hands, she almost collapsed from the stimulation after so much teasing and torture. The ointment mixed with her sticky lubrication, and even after she had covered the tattoo, Shadi couldn't stop herself from rubbing more and more, working her way inward. She parted the folds of her pussy, reaching in to finally, finally touch herself, finger herself, feel something in her-

But she couldn't. As soon as her fingers reached the opening of her vagina, they simply slipped past, gliding off of thin air as though there were a sheet of cellophane between her inner labia. She couldn't touch anything, feel anything, between them. Shadi lay down on the floor, splaying herself out backward, and started to desperately probe at the magic barrier. It reached all the way up to her swollen clit, an invisible sphere of force stopping her finger just millimeters from the surface even as she watched it throb in the light of what few candles hadn't burned down to nothing. She screwed her eyes shut and whimpered, pawing at herself, rubbing her inner labia from the outside, probing from different directions, even pinching and slapping, amplifying the pain of the tattoo from where it hid under the ointment, but nothing she did could give her any satisfaction.

The barrier almost seemed to respond to her attempts, growing and changing shape to cover any place she tried to settle on as good enough. Shadi grabbed for a spare pen among the spellbooks, almost jabbing it between her legs in desperation, but its handle, too, slipped aside before it could so much as graze her skin. She couldn't stop. She added more ointment, rubbed harder, squeezed her breasts again, but nothing she did could quite bring her to the brink. In her haze of lust and pain and exhaustion, she never quite noticed when the last of the candles burned out and she drifted off to sleep, still writhing on the bedroom floor.


	2. The Faridabad Mages' Guild

Shadi awoke groggy, cold, and thirsty as hell. The room was a mess, she was still naked, and any attempt to move her legs made agonizing pain flare across her pussy. Somehow she managed to drag herself to her feet and stagger into the kitchen, blinking at the sunlight pouring in through the balcony doors, to pour herself a glass of water, about half of which ended up on the floor by way of her chest. She checked the clock as she refilled the chilling pitcher from the sink to find that the day was well into the 17th hour, almost noon. Shadi had hoped to not fuck up her sleep schedule too badly over the weekend, but it looked like that wasn't going to happen. She managed to get significantly more of the second glass into her stomach, then grabbed some clothes from the closet and headed for the restroom.

Her head was still throbbing, and her legs were shaking from pain and exhaustion. She gave herself a bit of a rinse from the washing tap, gingerly applied some healing ointment to the fresh tattoo, and slipped a strip of gauze into her panties as she put them on. The ointment started its work fast, replacing pain with the strange, prickling sensation of mending magic dispersing into her body. By the time she'd put on a breast band and a pair of pants, she almost didn't even feel like collapsing into a chair and doing nothing for the rest of the day. Almost. She made it out to the balcony with a blanket, a samosa, and the chilling pitcher before crumpling into her nest of weatherproof cushions and drifting off into a comfortable daze.

Only the summer heat and unceasing sunlight kept the sounds of the street below from lulling Shadi to sleep. Shouting and engines and streetcar bells wove a comfortingly familiar tapestry of background noise, the same old Chabahar she'd always known. No matter what her family did or where they decided to fuck off to for a handful of rupees, Chabahar would be there for her. If she craned her head up and over the balcony railing, Shadi could even catch a glimpse of the Faridabad Mages' Guild pyramid squatting among the spires of downtown, its austerely steep and lavishly inlaid granite faces whispering the promise of power over the rooftops of the low-rise offices and apartment blocks that cowered at its feet.

Shadi wouldn't have to return to that place for another day and a half, though. She spent half of Friday lounging on the balcony, polishing off three samosas and downing two pitchers of water and a pot of coffee before heading back inside to clean up last night's mess. She made another pot of coffee, swept up stray flecks of herbs, tossed the burned out remains of candles into her wax bin, and stacked the ink trays neatly in the sink. Unused materials went back into their labeled places on the shelves above her desk, and Shadi carefully snapped her notes back into their binder in order before finally dragging the rug and cushion out to the balcony. She'd leave brushing them for tomorrow.

By the time Shadi slumped into place at her writing desk, the sunlight scattering from the whitewashed apartment block facades across the street was turning from orange to red, the day quickly turning too dim for work. She reluctantly lit a single lamp, telling herself she wouldn't stay up too late, and opened the slim binder she had left out on the desk: "Sex Magic Jyeshta 1968." Even Shadi's hobbies deserved some organization. She flipped the binder open to the blank sheets of writing paper in the back, dipped her pen in its well, and started a new heading in her notes.

"Day 1: Casting of chastity spell appears to have succeeded. No noticeable side effects apart from pain inflicted by mundane means while casting. Casting alone was extremely demanding, likely not meant for use on oneself. Effect of physically repelling hands and objects from erogenous zones is unexpectedly specific — spell appears to discern intent. Will investigate further and take measurements tomorrow. Principles involved might be useful for other applications."

Shadi planted her face in her hands and wracked her mind for details, struggling to record every impression she could think of. She scrawled out a few more lines, struck through "extremely demanding" to scribble in clarification, continued with a relevant quote in Arabic, and soon enough found herself turning over the page onto a fresh leaf of blotting paper.

The next page filled up without her ever feeling like she knew what to write next, and halfway through the third, trying to remember what she had dreamt of the night she cast the spell, Shadi drifted off to sleep in her armchair. The pen, still perched delicately between her fingers, slid slowly down and clattered to the tile floor, waking her with a start. She took this as a sign it was bedtime already, afraid to even look at the clock. Shadi carefully put away her writing supplies, snuffed the lamp, and climbed into bed smiling.

Saturday went to cleaning, laundry, and a tentative sponge bath. Shadi didn't feel ready to head out to a bathhouse just yet, but tap-cold water was heavenly on her tender groin, and the relief from the sticky summer heat was irresistible. She went out in the evening for a walk down to the library, handing in al-Azhari's _Magic of the Transanatolian Monastery_ and checking out a promising volume of Mongolian healers' society journals. The fresh air, still cooling from oven-hot to night warm, felt to Shadi like it replenished a missing part of her, and walking almost hurt little enough to be bearable. With some care, she decided, the tattoo should heal comfortably enough over the course of the week. Experiment successful. She recorded as much in her notes and went to bed at a respectable mid-fourth hour.

It might have been coincidence that Shadi met Jinani for the first time that week, and it might have been coincidence that she decided to press to the back of the tram when she saw the flash of yellow pinned to the tall woman's sari. But magic never quite works the way it should, whether the difference is between a fizzle and a bang or a strange tattoo and a burst of courage at just the right moment, and sometimes a sorceror's intent matters more than their means of pursuing it. Whatever the reason, it was not too long after that long Thursday evening in the candlelight that Shadi found herself pressing past the middle aged couple hovering by the rear doors and scooting into the seat beside a woman with perfectly braided dark hair and piercing hazel eyes.

"Dorud, salam, good morning. Do you mind?"

"Go ahead." She tugged her purse aside a token distance and patted the seat beside her, smiling. "Dorud bar shoma."

"Thank you," Shadi replied as she sat down. "Say, you're a mage with the Faridabadi too, right? I couldn't help but notice the badge."

The woman gave her a look of apprehension for a moment, dissolving into a smile when Shadi flashed her own badge from her purse. "I am, I am. I assume you're with us, too? You can call me Jinani. Sorry to check your badge there; I'd never mean to be rude but one can't be too careful with some things nowadays, you know."

"Oh, I don't blame you. Tough times. My name's Shadi. I wonder how long we've been taking this same streetcar line to work without ever saying a word to each other?"

"Well, I've been working at the Guild for a few years now, but I only moved to the western quarter recently," Jinani replied, still circling away from details. "Probably not too long, but it's still nice to meet you."

"Oh, I've lived here since before I had the job," Shadi said, trying her part to steer the conversation somewhere less tense. "It's a lovely neighborhood. Have you ever been to the park on Kaspar Khorasani street?"

And that was the last either of them mentioned work for the rest of the ride downtown. Jinani's family was Bengali, she owned a cat, she loved green dresses and blue irises and dusty afternoons, and Shadi had no idea whether she was a combinator or janitor or the head of the enchanting department. The only clue Shadi had as to Jinani's position in the Guild was the single orange stripe across the corner of her badge indicating her security clearance, and both of them wanted very much to keep it that way. No one on the bottom liked trying to make good with a superior. No one at the top liked a suck-up.

For all of Shadi and Jinani's efforts, the topic of the Guild became harder to avoid as they disembarked in front of its looming pyramid, and as they climbed the steps into the lobby, the conversation petered to awkward silence for lack of specifics. Shadi dreaded the inevitable maneuvering and posturing that came with any prolonged conversation with coworkers. Fuck, why had she chatted up a fellow Faridabad mage to begin with? What was she thinking?

Her eyes flickered to Jinani's sleek hands when she reached out to press the lift call button, the reflection of the granite wall flashing across shimmering teal nail polish, and she remembered. She blushed again, just a bit, and tried as hard as she could not to imagine those nails tracing gentle curves across her belly, those soft fingers cupping her face— The blush was getting worse, now, and Shadi tried her best to hide it with a slight bow of thanks as she stepped through the doors. Fuck, there was no getting around it, she'd have to punch for her floor. A show of status.

Shadi was a combinator, barely a qualified mage by the Guild's standards. In her generation, after the Termez Accords, the Persian war industry had mostly closed up shop for lack of farms to raze in the northern countries. All the fifty-something sorcerors who had spent the last decades drawing up kill-domes and fire wards and counter-counter-counterspells for blowing up Kazakhs flooded the civilian job market and, armed with employment histories a cubit long, left Shadi and her six years of academy training stuck running combinations in a fourth floor cubicle farm. She punched the lift button with a flicker of shame, feeling Jinani's eyes on her. Jinani, blessedly, punched six, not too high up. Maybe things wouldn't go completely sideways.

"Well, I hope to see you around," Shadi said as she stepped out into the fourth floor testing hall, and Jinani smiled and waved. Shadi paced smartly down the aisles and slid onto the cushioned stool in her cubicle exactly five minutes before the start of the fifteenth hour. The musty air of the office was still cool with the morning, but she turned on her rattling desk blower in anticipation of the sun to come. The off-beat click-clack of the stand wobbling back and forth with every wave of the fan mixed with the patter of typewriters across the recording floor to set the rhythm for transcribing notes out of last week's workbook. Shadi pulled the loose-bound pages from her desk drawer, stretched her wrists, and began with Project Parwal, Module 4, Variant 4-106, aligned to the mansion of Chitra: "Effects similar to 4-104. Duration increased to 2 hours, 12 minutes, 24 seconds. Second sub-variant used three (3) drops of almond oil. Maryam test read 3.7 points for first sub-variant, 3.8 for second. Propose investigating further in next variant block..."

The floor supervising officer, one of those fifty-something ex-warmages down to the leather boots and Heron clan blue scarf, made her rounds at fifteenth hour sharp to exchange a couple words at every cubicle opening and stamp attendance on a tortoiseshell plastic clipboard.

"Have a good weekend, Chabahari?"

"More than I could say," Shadi replied without thinking, halfway through copying out material weights and cost estimates for Variant 4-107. "How about you, officer Simin?"

Simin chuckled. "Nice to hear that from you, of all people! I went out for dinner on Friday, nothing too special. Glad to hear you had fun too. Keep up the good work."

And with that she took four and a half clack-clack steps down to the next cubicle and Shadi flipped the page to 4-107, blood rushing in her ears. No. No. No. Don't mention the weird sex magic at work, you fucking idiot. Don't bring it up. Don't allude to it. Just the thought of it made the pain of the tattoo flare up again, and Shadi squirmed a bit in her seat. She'd really gone and done this, hadn't she? She thought of Jinani again and nearly typed "nail lacquer" in her notes. Deep breaths.

Somehow, she got back to work, but not without thinking more about Jinani. Lunch came around and she was nowhere to be seen in the first floor food court, so Shadi ate alone at a balcony table overlooking the street. She leaned back to look up at the terraced walls above her that hid almost all of the pyramid but the executive spire at the peak, wondering what Jinani was up to, somewhere in the floors and floors of iron and granite above. Shadi shoveled down a cup of fish stew and two bowls of rice and headed back to the office, where Simin dropped a sheaf of papers on her desk as soon as she could settle into her seat.

"How's the transcription going, Shadi Chabahari?"

"I'm a bit more than halfway through, ma'am. I should be done by twenty-second hour," Shadi replied.

Simin wrinkled her nose. "How about you take a break from that for now? I need some retests done for the 4-130 block by the end of the day. Your transcripts can wait." She slapped the papers she'd just set down, indicating the variant specifications, then pivoted neatly and left with the fringe of her scarf trailing just behind her.

Shadi buried her head in her hands as soon as Simin was out of sight. Sunday was supposed to be an easy day. She didn't want to do any walking she could avoid, not in this state. She sighed deeply, gathered her strength, and finished her sentence before scooping up the spec sheets, shoving them into her book bag, and awkwardly waddling down the aisle to the runerooms. These were located in the middle ring, a hollow column of reinforced stone and concrete rooms cutting the lower floors of the pyramid into an inner core and outer ring of offices. Past an "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" door lay neat rows of numbered rooms decorated only in plain tile flooring and sheet iron walls. Shadi signed out a supply kit from a rack by the door and ducked into a changing booth.

Experimental spells could be nasty things, and getting mages' noses replaced was expensive. The safety wards came pre-printed on punched-out sheets of transfer paper, which Shadi had to strip down to apply. One went over her upper chest, one around each thigh, one up her back, and one across her forehead. The feeling of industrial-strength glue and magical pigments sticking to her skin as she peeled off the paper never stopped being disgusting, no matter how familiar it was. Fuck, Shadi was definitely going to have to hit the bathhouse tonight. She twirled slowly a few times, arms raised, in front of the wall-mounted blower, until the transfer glue set solid enough for her to put her dress back on. The tattoo still hurt, but it was manageable. She left the booth, signed the sign-out card a second time next to "Wards Applied," and stepped into the first runeroom proper on the left.

This being a Sunday, the whole hallway was empty save for her. The middle ring was almost eerily quiet, even with the bustling sounds of the offices above and below murmuring through the walls. Shadi flicked on the lights and waited for the ceiling fixture to warm up and start casting a solid yellow glow between the slats of its protective grating before she closed the door to the hallway and turned the flag to "In Use." The runeroom doors didn't lock; the flag was for safety, not privacy. Shadi emptied her bag onto the desk in the far corner and started to sort through the spec sheets. The materials she needed were still stocked in the runeroom drawers from last week.

Over the summer days, the sun and coal smog and the body heat of thousands of office workers seeped into the stones of the city just a bit faster than they could cool down at night. This late in the summer the iron paneling of the middle ring was warm to the touch, and Shadi had barely gotten the materials she needed measured out on the desk before the first drops of sweat started to run down her forehead. She fanned herself with a stapled packet as she worked the pantograph, carefully tracing patterns from the spec sheets to workpaper in colored ink and perching ingredients in their proper places with tweezers.

"It won't be too long," she muttered to herself as she placed the first amulet in the center of the circle. "Just a few combinations." She tapped a tuning fork against the desk, hummed to match its tone, and began the first incantation.

Simin knocked on the door two hours later.

"Shadi? Shadi Chabahari?" she called.

"Yes, officer. Safe to enter!"

Shadi paused halfway through tracing a particularly difficult rune and propped the pantograph up away from the paper. Simin opened the door just enough to take a half-step through and lean slightly past the frame.

"I was looking for you in the outer hall. How close are you to finishing the retests? I still need last week's transcripts from you by floor close, or tonight's mail will run and you'll have to take them up by hand. I'd hoped you'd be done by now."

Shadi turned back to the desk and tried to wipe the sweat from her face surreptitiously as she flipped through the remaining pages.

"Just one more after this one. Less than half an hour, hopefully," she replied.

"Good, good. Why don't you get yourself a glass of water and finish up as soon as you can? I think we can get everything done on schedule if we hurry."

Simin was out in the hall before Shadi could get another word out. "But you said the transcripts-" she retorted to the closed door, and sighed. She really did need a break for water. She capped all her inkwells, washed the brush from the pantograph, and headed for the break room. The air outside the runeroom, stale though it was, felt heavenly cool in her lungs. She half-assedly rinsed out a tin cup in the sink as quickly as she could, filled it with lukewarm tap water, and downed it in one breath still standing at the counter. Fuck, it was not good weather for this shit. Shadi hadn't realized she was lightheaded until the fourth cup started to put a dent in the wooziness. She put a hand on the counter to steady herself and take a deep breath.

Simin passed by just at that moment and gave Shadi a look that let her know her break was over. One more cup of water, one more breath of fresh-ish air, and it was back to the testing hall. It had barely been a few minutes. The heavy scent of stale incense smoke made her head swim, but there was more work to do. Shadi took a deep breath, trudged back to the runeroom, and resumed her work as fast as she could. If anything, the brief reprieve had made her realize just how suffocating the heat had become. Just one more after this one.

This one fizzled in a pillar of brilliant green and blue flame that flashed up from the amulet and ricocheted off Shadi's face ward into the wall, leaving an iridescent smear on the metal surface. Shaken, she jotted down "Catastrophic failure on step 11 — Type 4 energy leak," and continued to the last variant. That one didn't work at all. She slumped over the desk, burying her head in her hands. The numbing cream she'd applied in the morning was wearing off, and she just wanted the day to be over. Time for more transcription.

Shadi trudged back to her desk, grabbed another cup of water on the way, and finished typing up the transcripts from last week halfway through the twenty-fourth hour. She dropped her typed packets in the mail cart just in time for the evening mail run and took the elevator to the ground floor. Exhausted though she was, she dawdled in the lobby for a few minutes, pretending to admire the roses lining the entranceway as she snuck glances toward the elevators, waiting for Jinani to appear.

Shadi didn't see her at all for the rest of the week. Fuck, had she blown it? Was Jinani avoiding her? The pain of the tattoo faded, but every time Shadi lay in bed at night teasing herself, idly prodding at the barrier of her chastity spell, she thought of shimmering teal nails and a bright smile on the morning streetcar. She didn't want to obsess. She obsessed. She filled more pages in her binder with notes on the spell at night, spent the days working through the rest of batch five of Project Parwal so she could start on batch six, and fried as many samosas as she could cram into the icebox. Maybe she just needed to wait for Sunday.

She just needed to wait for Sunday.


End file.
